Social Media: America's Newest Weapon

The State Department is hosting technology camps in regions of the world with dictatorial governments, teaching protesters how to keep safe while using social media.

05 July, 2011

What's the Latest Development?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently attended a three-day technology camp in Vilnius, Lithuania. Hosted by the U.S. State Department, companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and Skype were on hand to show prospective protesters how to avoid official harassment while using communication media to protest government activity. Secretary Clinton singled out neighboring Belarus as a country whose restrictions on social media are unacceptable. Citing the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Clinton has previously defended the right to access information freely across political borders.

What's the Big Idea?

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, where popular uprisings across the Arab world were coordinated across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the American government is hoping to inspire similar events in countries whose regimes actively restrict the free flow of information. Rather than dropping bombs on a nation's infrastructure, the State Department views promotion of social media as a soft extension of American power. Since before the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began, a debate has taken place over the effectiveness of social media in fomenting revolution.

Blackstone's Byron Wien, Vice Chairman of Private Wealth Solutions Group, gave a speech laying out the wisdom he learned during his 80 years. Here are 15 of Wien's best life lessons, which teach us about improving our productivity, sleep, burnout avoidance, and everything in between.

Why do people quit their jobs? Surely, there are a ton of factors: money, hours, location, lack of interest, etc. For Alison McMahon, an HR specialist and the CEO of TwoFold, the biggest reason employees jump ship is that they're tired of working for lousy bosses.

By and large, she says, people are willing to put up with certain negatives as long as they enjoy who they're working for. When that's just not the case, there's no reason to stick around:

Nine times out of ten, when an employee says they're leaving for more money, it's simply not true. It's just too uncomfortable to tell the truth.

Whether that's true is certainly debatable, though it's not a stretch to say that an inconsiderate and/or incompetent boss isn't much of a leader. If you run an organization or company, your values and actions need to guide and inspire your team. When you fail to do that, you set the table for poor productivity and turnover.

McMahon offers a few suggestions for those who want to hone their leadership abilities, though it seems that these things are more innate qualities than acquired skills. For example, actually caring about your workers or not depending wholly on HR thinking they can do your job for you.

It's the nature of promotions that, inevitably, a good employee without leadership skills will get thrust into a supervisory position. McMahon says this is a chronic problem that many organizations need to avoid, or at least make the time to properly evaluate and assist with the transition.

But since they often don't, they end up with uninspired workers. And uninspired workers who don't have a reason to stay won't stick around for long.